Whatever That Means
by CokeBottleK
Summary: A collection of words and how they made an almost-improbable couple feel.
1. Agony: La Douleur Exquise

**DISCLAIMER: Mondo bummer as it is, I do not own anything ****Harry Potter****. Cover art by burdge-bug.**

_So I was on Tumblr awhile back and I found this list of words with no direct translations to English (I cannot for the life of me find the post to cite the list, so if anyone finds it, please message me so I can give credit where credit is due!). _

_Each chapter will focus on one of these words/phrases. There will be five short chapters – no more, no less – and they will give you the feels and… Yeah, I've got nothing else to say. _

_Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

_**La Douleur Exquise**_  
[French] The heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can't have.

* * *

She didn't understand how much it hurt.

She didn't she didn't she didn't _she_ _didn't_.

And maybe that's why it hurt so much in the first place – because she didn't even notice enough to realize how much it was killing him.

James knew she didn't notice. Because every time he looked at her – and he looked a _lot_, all the time – she wasn't looking back. She didn't feel the way his heart stopped whenever she walked by, the way it got caught in his throat every time he tried to say something to her. She didn't have the same dreams, didn't wake up in a cold empty bed and wish he was there with her.

At least, he didn't think she did.

She didn't notice the time he'd walked into a wall just because he'd been watching the way she flipped her very red hair out of the way of her very green eyes. She didn't notice the way he'd been pouring sweat the first time he asked her out, or the itchy red blush that crept up his neck every time after that. She didn't notice the way he couldn't do his homework in the library when she was there.

Because when she was there – when she was anywhere – he could only stop and stare and love her, as much as a fifteen-year-old boy can love anybody, and James thought he loved Lily Evans rather a lot.

But she didn't love him back.

She didn't even fancy him.

She liked him as a sort-of friend. A sort-of, arrogant, troublesome, irritating friend.

And that was on the good days. On the bad days she told him to get out of her face, that she never wanted to see him again, that he was such a stupid blighter and he shouldn't talk to her unless he wanted to get hexed.

As it was, James Potter usually wanted to get hexed. Because at least when she was hexing him, she was noticing, and the more she noticed, the closer she was to realizing the total and complete agony he was in. Perhaps, when she inevitably realized – because she had to, she really did, sooner or later, the pain was that palpable – then maybe she'd take pity on him. He'd take a pity chance.

He loved her and it hurt and it made him do extraordinarily stupid things.

It made him paranoid and jealous and obsessive and lonely. That wasn't him – James Potter was confident and level-headed and rational and sociable. Love made him crazy.

No, scratch that.

_Unrequited love_ made him fucking _certifiable_.

"Hey, Evans." He tried not to mess up his hair, but his twitchy hands got the better of him.

"Hey, Potter." She smiled at him.

_She fucking smiled at him._

Oh, God, he was going to throw up.

Because even when she was happy, it hurt. It shot a flaming arrow right into his heart, stuck and burning in his chest, igniting his bones with ridiculous hope that maybe she'd give him a chance.

"D'you wanna go out with me?"

"No, Potter."

She never gave him a chance. That flaming arrow that was stuck in his heart froze, suddenly encased in ice, and his whole soul was cold. His bones were made out of icicles and his muscles were frostbitten and he couldn't move or think because he was piled under a snowstorm, and it broke his heart.

Every. Single. Damn. Time.

He wanted her, wanted her so bad that it hurt. Wanted her so bad that it made him sick and it shattered his heart and sometimes it made it impossible to breathe. Because everything he thought and felt and smelled and saw was Lily Evans, and she was too busy being herself – her wonderful, brilliant, beautiful-right-down-to-her-soul self – to notice, to realize.

He loved her as involuntarily as he breathed.

And she had no bloody idea.


	2. Apology: Mamihlapinatapei

_**Mamihlapinatapei  
**_[Yagan] The wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something,  
but are both reluctant to start.

* * *

She looked at him and of course he was already looking at her.

He'd _been_ looking at her, and this time it wasn't just because she was pretty and he was in love and he could get away with it. That was part of it – that was always part of it – but this time it was because he was sorry, too, and maybe if his eyes bore deeply enough into her skull, into her bones and her muscles and her soul, maybe then she'd understand. Maybe she'd feel it.

And then she was looking back at him and she looked sad, and he hated himself because it was his fault. He wanted to say he was sorry, he wanted to say it out loud so it was real, but he couldn't. He didn't know why, but he just couldn't.

He knew it _wasn't_ his fault, not really, not _directly_, but he felt guilty, anyway. Because he'd been there and he'd started it and now he was stuck being sorry about it. He wanted to do something, say something, but he couldn't because she hated him – she really did this time – and it made him desperate because what was he supposed to do now?

He'd really fucked it up this time.

Lily watched him for a little while. James wouldn't mind, she thought, because he was always looking at her; she knew because sometimes she'd catch him and other times Alice or Marlene or even Remus would tell her:

"James was staring at you at breakfast."

"James was staring at you in class."

"James was staring at you in the library."

He was always staring, and lately Lily had been catching his eye.

She caught it now, that afternoon in the courtyard, and she wanted to say something. She wanted to say she was sorry for calling him names, for shouting at him like she had. She wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault, and the only reason she'd walked away was because Severus had been her best friend and now he wasn't and she couldn't breathe with that word – that name that he'd called her – stuck in her ears, forcing its way down her throat to contaminate her heart, her lungs, seeping into her skin and coursing through her veins.

But that wasn't James's fault.

He shouldn't have done what he did and Severus shouldn't have said what he said. They should have both just shut up and left each other alone, because in the end she was the one who got hurt. She was always the one getting hurt.

She was the monkey in the middle of their stupid, sick little rivalry, and it wasn't fair.

So of course she'd been angry.

Now, though, now she was just sorry.

But she shouldn't be the one to say it first, so she just kept watching him and he kept watching her and they both knew that the other one knew that they were watching them. They thought that maybe that was enough, that they were watching and they were sorry and they wanted the other one to know that everything was all right. And if everything wasn't all right, well, it would get there.

James messed up his hair and Lily was blushing, but hazel stayed on green and the colors were melding together somewhere in the in-between, meeting in the middle of that space between them in the courtyard and exploding into a million little honey-green stars that fell and sparked against the stone pavement.

James wanted to say he was sorry and Lily wanted to tell him that it was okay, but neither of them knew how to start.

So they just kept watching and wondering, and their swirling honey-green stars kept sparking. James was still very much in love with her, and despite her better judgment, Lily thought that maybe she fell in love with him a little bit, too.

But that, she thought, was a problem for another day.


	3. Affection: Cafuné

**_Cafuné_**  
[Brazilian Portuguese] The act of tenderly running your fingers through someone's hair.

* * *

It was sixth year, and they were friends. They still stared and James was still in love with her, and Lily was dealing with the problem that was being a little bit in love with James Potter, but she could handle it – Lily Evans never got herself into anything she couldn't handle.

Not that she'd asked for this, she thought as they lay together on the sweeping lawns down to the lake in the middle of the night. No, she hadn't asked to fall a little bit in love; love had been thrust upon her, the way that death and taxes were said to work.

Well, she thought that was fitting, because this love was taxing and it was killing her.

She tried not to think about it, and usually that worked out just fine.

She knew it wouldn't always be so easy, but for now she'd take what she could get, because now James was sitting behind her with her head in his lap, and he was running his fingers through her hair, and she didn't want to think of anything that might complicate this.

They had an affectionate friendship; that's the way it had been, right from the very start, and neither of them had been surprised by that. It was a manifestation of all those days, weeks, years of staring, all those hours of James wanting and pining and dreaming and chasing, and the fact of the matter was that Lily craved his attention, more than she ever knew or cared to admit.

It wasn't that she was selfish or greedy. James made her feel safe and worthwhile, like she was worth something more than a bag of bones that happened to be stitched together by poise and good looks, the way the other boys saw her.

James _saw_ her. It was different.

It was different, and she needed it, just like she needed his fingers running through her hair.

James's fingers skimmed over her satin scalp, twisting around those very red tendrils, twirling them and mussing them up and inhaling the scent that wafted up to his nostrils with every one of those twists and twirls. She smelled like grass and cherry blossoms and he was desperate to show her how incredibly _wanted_ she was.

But he didn't know how to do that without pushing her boundaries, so he didn't say or do anything, he just kept running his fingers through the silky waves of red that spilled onto his lap.

"Hey, Evans," he said quietly, just in case she'd fallen asleep.

"Hmm?" She was quite close to sleep, teetering on the precipice between the conscious and whatever was in her dreams. Which, incidentally, tended to consist of messy hair and a crooked smile, and the phantom touch of fingertips on the back of her hand.

"I want to tell you something." He paused, and their heartbeats skipped together, reverberating over the grounds and across the lake, rippling through the grass and swishing over the waves. "But I don't want to go too far."

Lily opened her eyes, and the green blazed so fiercely in the darkness. They were glow-in-the-dark, phosphorescent kind of eyes, and James would be very happy if he never saw anything else again in his whole entire life.

If he could just watch her eyes and feel her hair between his fingers, he could die happy and young and so very, completely fulfilled.

"Maybe you shouldn't tell me," she said, afraid that he'd go too far and she'd follow him all the way.

James looked down at her and a light that wasn't there flashed across the lenses of his specs. "There are always a thousand things I want to do that I shouldn't," he said, "and they all seem to revolve around you."

"I'm sorry."

"That's just the way it is."

He didn't seem upset or remorseful or anything, Lily noticed. He was contemplative, accepting, like all those things he shouldn't do were just as inevitable as the weather or the passing of days. Days that she spent with him, nights that she wanted to stretch out like elastic so they never, ever stopped.

If the nights didn't stop, she could stay right where she was, lying in the grass with his fingers in her hair.

And maybe someday his lips could be on hers, too.

Once she handled that little bit of love she kept telling herself she had under control, anyway.

She sat up then, and curled her legs around his waist, reveling in the heat that mingled between their overheated bodies and hammering hearts. She ran her fingers through his hair then, delving those slim porcelain bones into the dark depths of eternally unkempt tresses, and she tried to convey every last bit of that little bit of love that was cracking her heart in two.

She thought she might give one of those halves to him.

"Don't give up on me," she said, and it was a quiet plea on a fluttering breath that floated across their in-between to dance on his lips, almost like she'd kissed him and whispered secrets into his mouth. "I've grown a bit attached to the way you touch me."


	4. Amor: Forelsket

_**Forelsket**_  
[Norwegian] The euphoria you experience when you're first falling in love.

* * *

Okay, so she was a lot in love with him.

She was a lot in love with him, and she couldn't breathe.

God _damn_ it, this was supposed to feel good. Love was supposed to feel good, like sweep-you-off-your-feet, heart-as-light-as-air, everything-is-fucking-rainbows kind of good, and what did she get?

Nausea.

It wasn't real nausea, that much she knew for sure. She wasn't being infected with a sort of love-drunk influenza. That didn't make any sense – less sense than how very much in love she was. The nausea was nerves and paranoia and complete, utter inadequacy.

She wasn't good enough for him.

_Fucking hell._

How on earth had she allowed this to get so out of control?

She was lying, curled up on his bed – Lily Evans was in James Potter's bed, yeah – waiting for him to get back from Quidditch practice because they were supposed to study.

How was she supposed to study when she was in love with him?

Who the fuck made these decisions? What sort of high-concentrated acid was the universe smoking? Were the Fates crack addicts, was Destiny on shrooms?

It was _bonkers_, all of it, completely.

These thoughts chased each other across every plane and angle of Lily's mind when she heard the door creak upon. She knew it was James – she knew the way he walked, the sound of every inhale-exhale, the way his right foot fell heavier than his left – so she didn't turn around, and James flopped sideways on the bed next to her and wound his arm around her waist.

"I don't want to study," he said, and she felt the way his lips tugged at her hair, he was so close and she was so in love and _she didn't deserve him_.

He'd earned much better than her, and she hated that – hated herself for letting it happen, for falling in love with someone who had tried to give her everything so many times before and what were the chances that he even wanted her now?

But she had to tell him, anyway.

It was only fair.

"I have to tell you something," she said, and she rolled out from under his arm and hid under the blankets. The undercurrents of dimly lit cotton would surely save her from a broken heart.

She crossed her fingers, anyway.

"Lily, what –"

"I love you," she said, and the confession was muffled against scarlet-hued fibers that were three shades darker than her hair. "I'm in love with you and I'm scared as hell because maybe you've finally come to your senses and maybe you don't love me back anymore."

There was silence and she prayed that it would suffocate her.

"Lily." Her name was a whisper floating between his lips, hovering there like that's where it belonged.

With him.

His hand tugged at the blankets so he could see her face. It was pink, flushed with worry and the sting of a rejection that was sure to come, and her eyes were bright, like those phosphorescent orbs had melted down in the heat of fire, in the crosshairs of age and overuse, and James hated to see her broken.

The people you fall in love with aren't supposed to shatter.

Not like that.

Not ever.

"I'm really sorry," she said before James could take her heart and run away with it for good. "I am, I'm sorry if I wasn't supposed to tell you but I _had_ to because I love you – and it hurts – and I love you, anyway, and _I can't make it stop_."

She almost cried. She was on the verge of tears like waterfalls, but suddenly James was gripping her neck just below her ear and he was kissing her – harshly, fiercely, urgently, desperately, pouring in all those years and weeks and hours, every twist and twirl of her hair around his fingers, _everything_ everything.

"Don't stop." He murmured the words against her mouth and nudged her lips apart with his. He rolled over so he could feel every one of her curves latching into every one of his corresponding contours. "Never stop."

Lily shut her eyes tight and kissed him back, meeting him for every bite and stroke and open-and-close, and their lips sparked with those honey-green stars and her porcelain bones twisted through his raven-dark hair, and his lips were on hers because she was in love and she wasn't handling it, it was handling her.

"I love you," James said, and his breath was heavy and ragged as it crashed into hers. "I love you and I need you to keep loving me back."

"I love you back," she promised him.

He swallowed her words so that they settled right into his heart where those arrows used to be, and his bones weren't icicles anymore and his muscles had thawed.

His soul breathed as involuntarily as it loved her, and she loved him back – just as inevitably, as completely, as madly and improbably and as wholly as anyone had ever loved anyone else, as much love as two seventeen-year-olds could cram between one another.

As it turned out, in fact, that was quite a lot of love.

And everything else could just go straight to hell and nothing else mattered and the universe really was dropping high-concentrated acid and it was _brilliant_.

Everything was green and black and honey and red, and it exploded with such a note of finality that even a Fate or two stopped huffing her next line to watch it happen.


	5. Always: Ya'aburnee

_**Ya'aburnee**_  
[Arabic] "You bury me." It's a declaration of one's hope that they'll die before another person,  
because of how difficult it would be to live without them.

* * *

They sat cross-legged on the mattress, facing each other, elbows propped up on their knees and pinky fingers locked together in a promise.

"You and me," James said, and his honey eyes were pooling into molten gold, "just like this, all the time."

"Bones connected, lips locked," Lily agreed, and her eyes were dizzying discs of neon light that popped and sizzled right into his skin to tinge his soul, and it was stitched into his body and he felt safe again.

"Tongues tied," he added, and winked when she laughed at him. He tucked the echo of that laugh away for when he'd need it next. "I love you, by the way."

She blew him a kiss with her free hand.

And he caught it on his lips.

They untwined their I-swear little fingers and crawled over the blankets, landing on the white linen pillows in sheets of red and a mop of black, peach-and-ivory skin flushed with unhandled love and cross-hearted promises.

Crossed and hoped to die, one after the other, the way romance was – literarily – supposed to be.

Lily glanced at him and he glanced back. Their eyes locked like they used to but the heaviness in the air had dissipated, and the only thing that lingered was that relieving sense of _finally _because in the end, they'd made it, and everything was all right.

James flipped his hand palm-up and his thumb grazed her thigh, skin-on-skin, and it sparked and sizzled and even when it was an accident, she loved the way he touched her.

"Hold my hand," he said quietly. He already missed the way the atoms of her skin and bones matched so perfectly with his. That was love, that was meant-to-be, when your skin knew it before you did.

She slipped her hand into his, and their fingers locked of their own accord.

There was a beat of silence. He turned on his side to whisper in her ear.

"I want you forever," he confided, like they were children sharing secrets in the treehouse, late afternoon at some adult's house they didn't know while their parents drank tea and the children scraped their knees.

The secret passed from his lips to her ear, and it skipped across the astral planes and hid itself away for safekeeping.

"And maybe for another forever after that," Lily said, just as quietly, and that secret followed the other's path, down the yellow-brick road to another Neverland, just in case they needed it anytime soon.

His fingers twisted through her hair, red twining around peach, and he watched it shimmer in the last vestiges of the candle they'd kept burning while the moon rose outside their window.

"Every last infinity."

"And a half," Lily offered him a wry smile that he returned, bursting at the seams with halves of infinities that pieced together to be their whole forever. "Just in case."

His fingers tightened between hers and hers squeezed back, and she leaned in and he met her halfway, murmuring just before two lips became one kiss:

"Just in case."

* * *

_A/N: Well, put a cap on this, because that's this project done. Five interwoven drabbles in one day – not bad, not bad at all._


End file.
